This invention relates to pouches adapted to receive and hold envelopes and similar items and more particularly relates to a convertible loading and unloading pouch and means for mounting the pouch on an automated photographic customer order sorting device.
In the photofinishing industry, orders from individual customers are received at a dealer location and then shipped from the dealer locations to a central processing laboratory. After processing is completed, it is necessary to sort the envelopes containing individual orders from the multitude of orders that have been subjected to the large scale batch processing operation in order to return the finished order to the individual customer.
In the past, most of the sorting has been conducted manually. Due to the increasingly competitive nature of the business and the resultant need for reducing labor costs and increasing the output volume capacity of a facility, it has become desirable to automate the sorting process. In connection with automated sorting, and in order to take maximum advantage of the time and labor savings realized, it is also desirable to minimize subsequent handling of the product. To that end and also to avoid human errors that can arise through unnecessary handling, the present invention provides a novel convertible loading and shipping pouch for each dealer/customer into which the envelopes containing the finished orders for that dealer can be delivered in the automatic sorting machine and which lends itself when closed to serve also as a practical delivery container.
An efficient automatic sorting machine has been developed which carries the envelopes to the sorting locations in a vertical orientation in preformed pockets that have a hinged bottom panel which can be controllably opened to deliver the envelopes to the proper sorting receptacle. The bags presently used in the photo industry for delivering orders to dealers are not suitable for direct mounting on the sorting apparatus of the type described. The bags cannot easily be mounted on such a sorting apparatus while being oriented to provide an opening suitable for the reception of envelopes from the sorter. It is therefore a more specific object of the present invention to provide a convertible loading and shipping pouch that is quickly and readily mountable and demountable in such an automatic sorting apparatus.
It is another object of this invention to provide a machine-loadable, durable and yet readily handled convertible loading and shipping pouch of flexible material, together with associated mounting means by which to suspend the pouch removably at a loading station in an automated sorter, such that, despite flexibility of the pouch wall material, the pouch will remain consistently open to receive the customer order envelopes discharged into it from the sorting device conveyor, the pouch then being easily removable from the sorting device and its top closed and secured closed by convenient fastener means for subsequent handling and delivery to the dealer.
It is another object of this invention to provide such a pouch that is relatively lightweight, easily and safely storable and relatively inexpensive to manufacture.